mariyoshikong
Well-known member
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2021
- Messages
- 166
The Zidoo Z9 8K (Amlogic S928X-K) which came out around the same time as the Strato V absolutely has a native 4K UI.
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[Buyer’s Guide] Kaleidescape Quality Compared to Blu-ray & other Digital Sources
- Thread starter Rmarci
- Start date
It does, however, even Zidoo themselves offers the option to choose between a 1080p and 4K UI on those boxes, because they recognize that it doesn’t have the horsepower to run the UI as smoothly at 4K. And Kaleidescape clearly cares about the smoothness of the animations within their UI even more, it’s one of the more notable aspects of their unique UI, so I doubt they’d be willing to compromise on that.
Yeah, the Vero 4K boxes I have recommend and default to the 1080p UI, even as a 4K UI is an option.
The whole UI thing has never bothered me....I spend seconds actually looking at the UI. Grain, DNR, color anomalies, missing 4k and/or ATMOS versions of movies do bother me.
mariyoshikong
Well-known member
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2021
- Messages
- 166
I was thinking my older Vero 4K+ (Amlogic chip) could do a 4K UI but couldn't remember off the top of my head. I don't think anybody was doing a native 4K UI on the older Realtek RTD1619 chips but I would be surprised if that is what Kaleidescape is using since Realtek seems to have exited this space.
I think it’s a bummer the UI is in 1080. I think it was a bad move to not indicate this before the device shipped. If I wasn’t using a Strato C I’d be bummed but not a dealbreaker.
But I’m not going to accuse Kaleidescape of sending a company representative to the forums to blatantly lie to their customer base about it.
If you honestly think the company is lying to you, you should just cut your losses and move on.
OK, guys, can we get back to the topic of this thread and move the GUI discussion somewhere else...
Remember the Titans 2000
- pretty good, cleaner and sharper than MA
- Major upgrade over the 1080p BD.
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Dust Bunny 2025
-pretty good, but only low quality itunes source to compare
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Anaconda 2025
- Not bad but some shots look softer than MA
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Untitled Home Invasion Romance 2025
slow.pics
-pretty good, but only low quality amazon source to compare
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Pirates of the Caribbean The Curse of the Black Pearl 2003
slow.pics
-Disappointing encode. BD is already soft, and KS is worse. This needs a better encode.
UHD BD is only 50gb and KS is 76gb, I expected more...
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Freakier Friday 2025
- Cleaner, but some shots are softer than MA. And there might be a slight green tint.
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A Beautiful Mind 2001
slow.pics
-Not bad, but UHD-BD is slightly better overall
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Now You See Me Now You Dont 2025
slow.pics
- Slightly better compressed than the UHD-BD
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Primate 2025:
-pretty good, but only low quality itunes source to compare
Remember the Titans 2000
- pretty good, cleaner and sharper than MA
- Major upgrade over the 1080p BD.
##########################################
##########################################
Dust Bunny 2025
-pretty good, but only low quality itunes source to compare
##########################################
##########################################
Anaconda 2025
- Not bad but some shots look softer than MA
##########################################
##########################################
Untitled Home Invasion Romance 2025
Untitled Home Invasion Romance (2025) kscape vs Amazon | Slowpoke Pics
Slowpoke Pics image comparison service
slow.pics
-pretty good, but only low quality amazon source to compare
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Pirates of the Caribbean The Curse of the Black Pearl 2003
The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) kscape vs uhd-bd | Slowpoke Pics
Slowpoke Pics image comparison service
slow.pics
-Disappointing encode. BD is already soft, and KS is worse. This needs a better encode.
UHD BD is only 50gb and KS is 76gb, I expected more...
##########################################
##########################################
Freakier Friday 2025
- Cleaner, but some shots are softer than MA. And there might be a slight green tint.
##########################################
##########################################
A Beautiful Mind 2001
A Beautiful Mind (2001) kscape vs uhd-bd | Slowpoke Pics
Slowpoke Pics image comparison service
slow.pics
-Not bad, but UHD-BD is slightly better overall
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Now You See Me Now You Dont 2025
Now You See Me: Now You Don't (2025) kscape vs uhd-bd | Slowpoke Pics
Slowpoke Pics image comparison service
slow.pics
- Slightly better compressed than the UHD-BD
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Primate 2025:
-pretty good, but only low quality itunes source to compare
mariyoshikong
Well-known member
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2021
- Messages
- 166
I went back and read Mike’s comment and he is pretty clear that the limitation is with the graphics engine in the SOC.
My intent was not to accuse anybody of “blatantly lying” but more countering your argument that it was not a cost issue.
In this case it looks like they picked a SOC that for some reason has this limitation even though alternatives exist that do not.
Perhaps you should've gone back and read the comment which was linked yesterday (and you already replied to the post) before blatantly accusing him of lying, then.
Since you don´t know the complete list of requirements, you don´t know if the existing alternatives were real alternatives.
All this is pure speculation.
OK, guys, can we get back to the topic of this thread and move the GUI discussion somewhere else...
Remember the Titans 2000
- pretty good, cleaner and sharper than MA
- Major upgrade over the 1080p BD.
##########################################
##########################################
Dust Bunny 2025
-pretty good, but only low quality itunes source to compare
##########################################
##########################################
Anaconda 2025
- Not bad but some shots look softer than MA
##########################################
##########################################
Untitled Home Invasion Romance 2025
Untitled Home Invasion Romance (2025) kscape vs Amazon | Slowpoke Pics
Slowpoke Pics image comparison service
-pretty good, but only low quality amazon source to compare
##########################################
##########################################
Pirates of the Caribbean The Curse of the Black Pearl 2003
The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) kscape vs uhd-bd | Slowpoke Pics
Slowpoke Pics image comparison service
-Disappointing encode. BD is already soft, and KS is worse. This needs a better encode.
UHD BD is only 50gb and KS is 76gb, I expected more...
##########################################
##########################################
Freakier Friday 2025
- Cleaner, but some shots are softer than MA. And there might be a slight green tint.
##########################################
##########################################
A Beautiful Mind 2001
A Beautiful Mind (2001) kscape vs uhd-bd | Slowpoke Pics
Slowpoke Pics image comparison service
-Not bad, but UHD-BD is slightly better overall
##########################################
##########################################
Now You See Me Now You Dont 2025
Now You See Me: Now You Don't (2025) kscape vs uhd-bd | Slowpoke Pics
Slowpoke Pics image comparison service
- Slightly better compressed than the UHD-BD
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Primate 2025:
-pretty good, but only low quality itunes source to compare
Thanks for getting this back on topic
I wonder what's going on the with softness on pirates
I would definitely like the best possible encoding for pirates. Aside: does that count as a ghost movie?Thanks for getting this back on topic
I wonder what's going on the with softness on pirates
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (2011) itunes vs kscape vs uhd-bd(not BA) | Slowpoke Pics
Slowpoke Pics image comparison service
slow.pics
- Not great, barely beats low bitrate itunes which always does DNR in the first place, so it looks like KS did DNR in this one
- UHD-BD (not bloody affair) is much better.
- Grain looks weird, just like on the uhd-bd.
- Block artifacts are quite distracting in every bright highlight. Serouisly KS, just release that damn firmware update or give us a beta channel!!!!
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The Banshees of Inisherin 2022
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) kscape vs MA | Slowpoke Pics
Slowpoke Pics image comparison service
slow.pics
- MA wins: better grain retention, better fine details...
- Block artifacts are very annoying in this one
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Mercy 2026
- KS letterbox mask metadata is so stupid, look how much image we lose in this one... This movie is not 2.35!!!
This is so incredibly disappointing. I literally was tempted by this one.- Not great, barely beats low bitrate itunes which always does DNR in the first place, so it looks like KS did DNR in this one
- UHD-BD (not bloody affair) is much better.
- Grain looks weird, just like on the uhd-bd.
- Block artifacts are quite distracting in every bright highlight. Serouisly KS, just release that damn firmware update or give us a beta channel!!!!
Jin-X
Well-known member
Damn I was hoping this was a better master than the standalone releases but looks like it isn’t. Baffling with how incredible the Jackie Brown remaster looks.Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (2011) itunes vs kscape vs uhd-bd(not BA) | Slowpoke Pics
Slowpoke Pics image comparison service
- Not great, barely beats low bitrate itunes which always does DNR in the first place, so it looks like KS did DNR in this one
- UHD-BD (not bloody affair) is much better.
- Grain looks weird, just like on the uhd-bd.
- Block artifacts are quite distracting in every bright highlight. Serouisly KS, just release that damn firmware update or give us a beta channel!!!!
######################################
######################################
The Banshees of Inisherin 2022
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) kscape vs MA | Slowpoke Pics
Slowpoke Pics image comparison service
- MA wins: better grain retention, better fine details...
- Block artifacts are very annoying in this one
######################################
######################################
Mercy 2026
- KS letterbox mask metadata is so stupid, look how much image we lose in this one... This movie is not 2.35!!!
Even though the store metadata fixed the AR to 2.20... the movie still plays in 2.35 on my system...
Unfortunately we have no idea if the master is bad or it is just poor conversion by K. I'd guess the latter given how many problems they have
MarvinTheAndroid
Well-known member
Sad that is your conclusion but perfectly understandable and hard to disagree with.
I get the impression that K's conversion workflow is largely if not wholly automated and started off along the lines of lets just tweak a few things here and there and convert a few movies. Great it works, in so far as we have picture and sound that look ok, job done. Now we can just sell it so folks have something to fill their premium priced servers with.
Oh no, some paying customers have complained about a few movies being poor quality. Lets take a look. Oh dear folks are right so let's just tweak a few things here and there and reconvert and see what happens. Cool, it looks better so job done. So now with these new tweaks we can just carry on blindly converting and go birdwatching or something.
Oh no, some paying customers have complained about a few movies being poor quality. Let's just do what we did before because that sorted things out last time.
From what has been posted before, aside from a few movie specific tweaks, I wouldn't be surprised if the 'recipe' used is largely the same on all movies and works better for some than others. I also wouldn't be surprised if some tweaks that improve poor quality movies might also decrease quality on others.
I also wouldn't be surprised if sometimes unspecified 'Improvements in Audio and Video' were applied because they improved completely different movies and the same improvements were assumed when in fact the actual result was completely different. It would be interesting to analyse before and after to see just how much improvement or degradation there actually was as I have no confidence to trust in K that things are improved just because they say so. Sadly trust is easily lost but hard to gain.
If only there was a way to assess quality and incorporate such quality control into the conversion workflow. But you know something, something, resources.
Call me cynical, call me overly verbose but if you want to call my assumptions untrue then evidence would be welcome if not expected.
I get the impression that K's conversion workflow is largely if not wholly automated and started off along the lines of lets just tweak a few things here and there and convert a few movies. Great it works, in so far as we have picture and sound that look ok, job done. Now we can just sell it so folks have something to fill their premium priced servers with.
Oh no, some paying customers have complained about a few movies being poor quality. Lets take a look. Oh dear folks are right so let's just tweak a few things here and there and reconvert and see what happens. Cool, it looks better so job done. So now with these new tweaks we can just carry on blindly converting and go birdwatching or something.
Oh no, some paying customers have complained about a few movies being poor quality. Let's just do what we did before because that sorted things out last time.
From what has been posted before, aside from a few movie specific tweaks, I wouldn't be surprised if the 'recipe' used is largely the same on all movies and works better for some than others. I also wouldn't be surprised if some tweaks that improve poor quality movies might also decrease quality on others.
I also wouldn't be surprised if sometimes unspecified 'Improvements in Audio and Video' were applied because they improved completely different movies and the same improvements were assumed when in fact the actual result was completely different. It would be interesting to analyse before and after to see just how much improvement or degradation there actually was as I have no confidence to trust in K that things are improved just because they say so. Sadly trust is easily lost but hard to gain.
If only there was a way to assess quality and incorporate such quality control into the conversion workflow. But you know something, something, resources.
Call me cynical, call me overly verbose but if you want to call my assumptions untrue then evidence would be welcome if not expected.
I tend to agree. Its hard to deny that they are using some flawed automated workflow/script and that very little human and or QA is involved. My question would be is this some home grown thing and if so who was responsible for implementing some of the odd decisions the algorithm seems to make. I am still baffled that their process seems to function as if its encoding for a streaming service and not taking advantage of not being bound by bandwidth and storage restraints.